recollections
following a thief
2/2

I return to the scene of the crime, now milling with police. I say ‘Here’s the briefcase—the thief gave it back.’ The student asks ‘But where’s the thief?’ He’s asking a bit too much. Hide is somewhat critical of me for being so imprudent. She had been anxious. In truth I did not act on any plan, but in a somewhat mechanical way, not really thinking about what I was doing, devoid of any clear intention. I thought this a bit strange, since I had just been holding forth in a lecture-room about ‘the will’, about what it is for us humans to act deliberately.

The student newspaper of the University reported this incident next day. There was reference to a ‘philosophical hero’. Being praised has its pleasures, no doubt, but there was not truly any heroism at all. This impoverished man, perhaps, resorted to petty crime to keep himself going. Perhaps he was surprised to be in face of someone who had followed him after the theft, but who did not draw a gun or a knife or make a threatening gesture of any kind, but merely suggested in an alien but courteous idiom and a strange accent that he might return what he had stolen. At any rate, that’s what he did.

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